Is sharpening overrated?

Here are some observations from reading this thread, not necessarily in any order:
Diamonds don't wear out. You can fracture them and/or pull them out of the nickel matrix with too much pressure.
People rely entirely too much on jig-type sharpeners. If you are truly a knife aficionado, you would think you would learn the simple art of hand sharpening. It's not hard.
All you guys who are rebeveling and "regrinding" blades would do well to stop wasting money on stones and buy a decent belt grinder. You would save both time and money.
 
Bill DeShivs said:
People rely entirely too much on jig-type sharpeners. If you are truly a knife aficionado, you would think you would learn the simple art of hand sharpening. It's not hard.
All you guys who are rebeveling and "regrinding" blades would do well to stop wasting money on stones and buy a decent belt grinder. You would save both time and money.
Click to expand...

As for sharpening the art of free hand sharpening is nice and all but not everyone wants to learn it or they have a preference to use some type of jig or assisted sharpening device. For me I wanted to learn free hand sharpen but I honestly prefer my sharpmaker not because I can't get good edges off a benchstone but because it works, enjoy using it more, and I get some amazing results from it.

Belt grinders are big bulky machines that require power and removes the whole zen part of sharpening if you enjoy that type of thing. Not to mention require a whole different skillset than using a stone or something like a sharpmaker or lansky that you may already be using. Than there is the noise, cost, and storage issues. I take my 6in silicon carbide norton economy stone over a belt grinder any day of the week personally, if you were to throw a DMT XXC stone my way I wouldn't be complaining either and I imagine it be a whole lot quicker too.

Fun thing about knife sharpening the goal is to get a sharp knife but there are over a million different ways to get there. The hard part is finding what works for you.
 
the reason i'd prefer hand stones over belt grinder is that i have more feeling over the blade,
belt griners can screw up your edge really fast if not used properly
 
Bill, I respect you, thus I'll just say that fracturing could be mostly what is occurring as I was the one present doing the work. Still, if this is the case diamond particles fracture off way to easily from the nickel plate. Causing their usefulness to shorten wayyyy too quickly. Plus, their cost lacks economy. Hence, I'll sharpen on a different material that offers these benefits. DM
 
Gaston444 said:
If you reprofile from 20° per side towards 10-12° per side on a 9-10" stainless blade, with an Extra-Coarse 6" Dia-Sharp that has already sharpened one such knife by the same amount, then from the wear on that hone you are looking at 4-5 hours of hard work for a poor result, instead of just one or two hours for a great result... It's that simple, and a hard earned lesson for me...

And I do mean that: Those five hours of work will result in an uneven, assymetrical and inferior result compared to the one-two hours if you use a brand new 6" Xtra coarse...

Since I am lazy and want flawless results quickly, especially with a hard steel like S30V (RJ Martin 10.5" Blackbird) or with D-2 (like the 10" Lile "Mission" I did recently) I always buy two extra-coarse Dia-Sharp 6" hones for each new big knife ($36 per hone: $72 in total for one knife): One hone per side(!) to bring it down from the ridiculous 80° inclusive that the pristine 30 year old pre-dot Lile came with (fortunately on a beautifully thin 0.028" edge bevel shoulder thickness)...

The two Xtra-coarse hones I used for the 10.5" RJ Martin were so worn-out from taking off 8° per side (beautiful job though) they subsequently ruined the 9" Farid 440C FB prototype I tried to sharpen later on with the same two hones...: I sent it for a full re-grind at RazorEdgeKnives, and learned my lesson well: Two new X-tra coarse for each new big knife from now on...

I have no understanding how 20° per side can be considered even remotely useable... Who cares if it shaves: This is not sharpness...: On Randalls 10° per side is virtually bulletproof, and refuses to chip almost no matter the abuse: I have to admit some Custom makers have not proved so solid with the same angle on the same 440 stainless steel, even with thicker edges... Unfortunately again, most Custom makers do a much better job of symmetry and finish than Randall's medieval-level precision (the only thing Randall does fairly well is keeping the edge centered and paralell to the spine: That's about it, very rough otherwise except for the sheath and handles)...

I did buy two new 6" Extra Coarse Dia Sharp hones for the Lile Mission in D-2, from which had to take off over 25° per side, but on a thin edge, and I am glad I did, as the result is good and that thing "ate" the two hones just about dead, one per side, with a good 3 hours...

I hate sending in knives to professionals (they often lose a small bit of length under water-cooled power grinders, which aggravates me no end as often knives are already way under the specified length straight from the factory -especially Randalls!-: I also dislike it when there is a lot of dead space at the tip fo the sheath: Where does the endless shortening end?...).

Taking off 10 or 20° per side, by hand, on a 10 inch stainless blade is a grim job...: $70 of hones on a $1500 knife is a bargain to make life easier...

Gaston
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Why not try a different type of stone if the DMTs are wearing out so quickly? A coarse grit Norton Crystalon stone might be worth checking out for reprofiling jobs they cut fast and last for many years.
 
David-
I'm not saying that diamond SHARPENERS don't wear out.
Think about this: diamonds are embedded in a"matrix" of nickel plating- very much as if you laid down a layer of glue and sprinkled sand on top of it.
If pressure breaks a particle, it loosens in the nickel and can come out. The larger particles are subject to fracturing faster than the smaller ones.
Once the diamond level is down to the nickel, the plating starts wearing.
It's very easy to use too much pressure with diamond plates-especially coarse ones.
 
I ruined a few DMT plates when I started using them years ago because I was using the same heavy pressure that I used on my oil stones. Once I learned to use light pressure and let the diamonds do the work I never wore out another. The problem is that it can be difficult to not use heavy pressure when reprofiling and I think in that case it makes more sense to use a different type of stone then it does to keep wearing out expensive DMTs. A coarse 8in Norton Crystalon for $20 will work just as well for most steel and will last many years. Another thing to consider is that Diamond stones have a break in period when new and I wonder if some people are mistaking this for the stone wearing out?
 
I'll make a few points from the above posts:

-Anything finer than Extra-Coarse in diamond hones is too fine for efficient re-profiling work that creates truly flat edge surfaces...

-Natural Stones appear to work fine on carbon steel blades, or finishing up stainless steel blades, but they lose their flatness when re-profiling stainless steels: Losing their flatness means you end up with a poor uneven result...

-Free-hand sharpening without guides helps negotiating the change in the geometry of the curved edge's belly: Better control. When I re-profile, I rub mostly in lengthwise motion, as paralell to the edge as possible, to ensure the flatness of my initial surface: Finishing stages are more diagonal/perpendicular to the edge to remove the lenghtwise striations of the rough re-profiling...

-Dia-Sharp hones are by far the best I have ever encountered, with the densest diamond grit: Yes they wear off, and yes it is the diamond particles being dislodged, not the diamond themselves being worn: For all practical purposes the result is exactly the same...: Fresh ones do a good quick job, old ones do a crap job...

-There are many, many strikes against a belt grinder:
-Where do you put one in an appartment?
-Cost
-Belt wear costs (belts are in the $100 to $200 range I'm told, and a major factor of cost control among knife makers, often at the customer's expense)
-Possibility of fatal geometry mistakes in seconds
-Most convincing to me: The induced heat can screw-up the heat treatment near the apex of the edge, even it is is only in the final microns... Yes the serious temperature rise is only tiny and local, but you do get sparks, so there is some superheated areas in there somewhere...

Personally I would wish makers would drop the ridiculous and tiresome 20° per side edge angle "standard" (which is then routinely "interpreted" as 30 to 40° per side, even on high-end Liles for instance, fortunately on thin 0.028" thick edges, and even more so on Neeleys, unfortunately this time on 0.060" edges...), and I would hope instead that they would make the edges too thin and sharp, so that we can blunt them to the strength we want... Even more important would be decent edge bevel shoulder width, within 0.020" to 0.035", and not the ridiculous 0.050-0.060" we so often see on fixed blades...

Knife testers abusing knives without consideration for fine geometry are probably the cause of the universal predicament of dull out of the box knives we see, even from custom makers...

Gaston
 
A cheap belt grinder can be had for around $50. Belts are $2-$3 each. A $50 belt grinder is a pretty small machine and can be stored in a closet or kitchen cabinet.
You can make mistakes with one, but like any tool, you have to learn how to use it.
 
Gaston have you tried a coarse SiC stone like the Norton Crystalon? You can get a coarse 8in Crystalon for $20 and they work just as well as diamond for reprofiling and they last many years.
 
I do have a coarse stone part of a Gatco three-sided arrangement mounted on wood.

The funny thing about stones is they can be wildly inconsistent in performance...: The coarse stone of my first Gatco setup was friable and would lose its shape in just a few cessions, while the second identical Gatco set-up I bought had a coarse stone that lasted for years before losing its shape and taking in irregular surface grooves and "channels"... Stones do lose their shape over time, and this is especially true with stainless steel: This is so pronounced that, before the advent of diamond hones, I had never successfully put a truly sharp edge on a large stainless blade, while carbon steel blades were no problem...

Since the advent of diamond hones, the only steel I'm interested in is stainless (preferrably 440 or Aus-6/8), while before I had practically no choice but to get carbon steel (ironically in the 1980s, when diamond hones were much rarer and often not as good, stainless "tactical knives" dominated far more than they do today... Stainless on stones resulted in poor edges, and this is the main reason why none of my 1980s stainless knives have survived to this day... The damage inflicted by irregular shape-shifting stones just gradually ruined them... Today, with diamond hones, I wish I had kept some of these hopelessly dull 1980s knives!

Even more ironically, today many "tactical knives" are available in carbon, and in carbon only, precisely at the time when diamond hones, by all rational measure, should have made carbon steel completely obsolete... Well at least they ususally have a nice coat of real tough black paint...

As for the belt grinder, to begin with, what is $50 in the US is probably $75 in Canada, and none of my local hardware stores carry anything other than floor sanders... This means any place that has some to sell is at least a $100 cab round trip from where I am: I could mail order them I suppose, but again the shipping will amount to at least $50-60 at best.

I do concede I certainly could have used a belt grinder in the 1980s, when I bought cheaper knives with duller edges: If I had, I think some of those knives would have survived to today... Today, my collection is much smaller, and I seldom buy anything under US $1200 (more like CAN $1600-2400), so I prefer to send them to RazorEdgeKnives, with the nice option of Cerakoating if the finish goes wrong...

What usually happens nowadays is I do a major re-profiling by hand with diamond hones, then send the knife to RazorEdgeKnives for Cerakoating or re-finishing, especially if my bevels are uneven: He does offer the option of sharpening by hand on a guided sharpener, which loses no blade length and is beautiful.

He used to offer full edge re-profiling by hand as well, but after I asked him to do a 6" Medium Al Mar "Special Warfare" from 19° to 10° per side (he did an amazing job), he found the ordeal so difficult that he told me would not do re-profiling by hand anymore (I can understand very well...): So now I do the main re-profile myself, and he then "cleans-up" my edge at the same angle I did, by hand sharpening, refinishing the sides in satin or Cerakoat as needed... This is more or less how this works... Some knives I manage so well I don't send them in, but that is getting atypical...

Some knives I can thus test abundantly with my coarser edge, knowing that after sending out they will still look pristine in the end... This appears to be why I can actually test $1500 knives quite hard while most just look at them...

Gaston
 
If you buy $1500 knives and spend all that money on worn-out diamond hones, it seems like a belt grinder would still be relatively inexpensive for you.
 
Sounds to me like the real problem is buying a $1200 knife and still not getting what you want and having to do that much more work on it.
 
David Martin said:
Bill, I respect you, thus I'll just say that fracturing could be mostly what is occurring as I was the one present doing the work. Still, if this is the case diamond particles fracture off way to easily from the nickel plate. Causing their usefulness to shorten wayyyy too quickly. Plus, their cost lacks economy. Hence, I'll sharpen on a different material that offers these benefits. DM
Click to expand...

One thing that can be tried before writing off diamond plates, especially the coarse ones that have lost a lot of speed. Assuming they've been used with moderate pressure, most of the diamond should still be there. Even with heavier pressure a bunch should still be there - the diamond dressing tools we have for our grinding wheels at work get leaned on pretty good and still have plenty of diamond left.

Give the plate a light rub down with a fine silicon carbide stone and some oil - it doesn't take much work and less than the weight of the stone. Even at freehand speeds, it is possible for the diamond to get loaded up somewhat with swarf along the high points of the diamond. If you look at it through a loupe and good lighting, you might even see smooth shiny formations that are the steel glazed over the tops. Industrial diamond isn't shiny, should look dull.
 
Polymer erasers also work great for unclogging diamond plates. Trend sells one specifically for this purpose but I've found the regular ole polymer erasers from the arts and crafts store works just as well for 1/4th the price.
 
One strategy I've found to work well in the kitchen on lower RC steel is to leave at a relatively coarse finish and steel it. After, it can be brought back with a light steeling for quite a while. Works well even on the rim of a heavy glass cup or mug. By starting out with a rougher finish, I can greatly prolong the amount of usable life before the edge gets drawn out into a wire.
 
I still have my first set of DMT stones (from the 90s I'd say). They have been used to reprofile a few dozen larger fixed blades and they seem to have plenty of life left in them. Maybe not as abrasive as when new, but I also haven't really cleaned them well. I have also never thought about using a loupe to check my diamond stones, great idea to track longevity and over-pressure tracks.
I also get a calming satisfaction from free hand sharpening and although they are great teaching aids, sharp makers/grinders/edge pros/WE etc can take away from that.

OP, I would love to see some pics of your favorite knives and these edges you speak of! I can appreciate the fact that they actually get some use.
 
I'm new to 'sharpening' knives and couldn't get an edge on my sharpmaker to save my life. Went into one of those newfangled jig sharpeners (wicked edge) and LOVE it. Finally am able to put a nice cutting edge on both my edc knives and kitchen knives as well. Haven't delved into stropping as most recommend on this thread. Can someone recommend a good strop, which would assume to be leather, and recommended type and length? I've read black and green stropping compounds so I'll focus on that too. Any favorite outlets to buy these stropping accessories too?

Thanks for obliging this sharpening newbie. Apologies to the op for butting in- but this discussion has my attention and can hopefully help this newbie become more learned in stropping to maintain a fine workable edge.
 
Though I think it's already been covered, I just wanted to add my two cents.

I use a cheap Lansky system...The trick with Lansky's is everything needs to be straight from your rods to your stones. In fact the one I bought the ceramic stone wasn't perfectly straight. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong at first, till my Chef friend pointed out something wasn't straight. I replaced the stone with a upgraded sapphire one, and also the strop tool, and started getting amazing results.
 
You just need some smooth leather, like an old belt, or tack it onto a wooden block. The green compound is just regular steel buffing/polishing compound.

When people say honing, it can either mean fine sharping, or it can mean straitening. When your stropping your actually more polishing but not really altering the edge, hence why people use the green steel polish.
 
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